Sunday Final Nationals: Positive Start for ‘Westworld’ on HBO

While NBC still won Sunday night overwhelmingly with “Sunday Night Football”, the game dipped to a multi-year low for a Week 4 SNF — a trend that each NBC NFL game this season has experienced thus far based on household ratings. Viewer interest most likely waned from the Pittsburgh Steelers (which led 22-0 over the Kansas City Chiefs after one quarter) having accomplished the most lopsided first quarter on SNF since 2007.

On cable, the new HBO sci-fi drama “Westworld” (from executive producers Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and J.J. Abrams; based on the 1973 film) debuted well with 3.3 million same-day multi-platform viewers, matching the audience that saw the debut of HBO’s ‘True Detective’ in January 2014. This marks a vast improvement from the premiere of the pay cable outlet’s most recent high-profile series ‘Vinyl’ (1.4 million in Jan. 2016) which has since been canceled after one season.